When he was fighting back after being fired as deputy president in 2005, Jacob Zuma revived the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) struggle song Awulethe Umshini Wami (bring me my machine gun) and made it his signature campaign tune. In ANC meetings, from Nkandla to Polokwane, he would lead lusty renditions of the song, his body shaking as he imitated the firing of an automatic weapon.
The song was originally composed to boost morale in ANC military camps and among anti-apartheid activists inside the country in the 1980s. It is a call to arms, an indication that you were prepared to take up arms for your beliefs.
As his supporters joined Zuma in song, many in the ANC were not impressed. Andrew Mlangeni, one of the founders of MK in 1961 who served 26 years on Robben Island for taking up arms, said the “song has military character used during the struggle against apartheid and it’s no longer relevant today”.
He asked: “Who are you fighting? Your own people? The fight is over and that song must no longer be sung.”
Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, at the time the country’s defence minister, was more direct. He said those who sang the song “aba badlanga ekhanda” — they were not right in the head.
Lekota and Mlangeni were pilloried and marginalised in the ascendant Zuma leadership of the 2010s. Lekota formed COPE and began his journey into political obscurity. Mlangeni kept on fighting against ignorance and arrogance wherever he found it, while standing for the ANC’s key principles, until he died two years ago.
Mlangeni would be sad to see that some ANC members are still enamoured of nonsensical songs. At the KwaZulu-Natal ANC’s provincial conference the song of the moment was Wenzeni uZuma?, a ditty that asks “what has Zuma done?”.
The song is a staple at appearances by Zuma in courts for his corruption trial and at his numerous attempts — stretching back to 2005 — to dodge a trial, despite his repeated assertions that he wants his day in court.
Listening to the more than 1,500 delegates to the ANC’s KZN provincial conference ask “wenzeni uZuma?”, you have to wonder: do they not read, or do they not care about the man’s numerous transgressions, enumerated in various investigations from the public protector to the Zondo commission and in his corruption trial?
In January 2018 the same Zuma they are asking about appointed judge Raymond Zondo to head a commission of inquiry into state capture. Over the past few years Zondo — appointed by Zuma — has concluded that the former president was someone the Guptas used “against the people of SA, his own country and his own government to advance their own business interests”. He was at the heart of the “scheme of state capture”, opening the doors for them to “help themselves to the money and assets of the people of SA”.
To ask what Zuma has done, when the answer is available at the tap of a few keyboard keys, displays utter ignorance, an attempt to rewrite history, or an acceptance of the pillaging of our country to line the pockets of the Gupta and Zuma families.
Wenzeni uZuma? My word, the man was a looting machine. Under a State Security Agency project called Project Commitment, Zuma received a staggering R2.5m a month in 2015⁄2016 for his personal enjoyment. This was increased to R4.5m in 2016⁄2017. The money was handed to him by David Mahlobo, then minister of state security.
The singing of this ludicrous song underlines several depressing characteristics of the ANC’s delegates.
First, they do not wish to live in a democratic republic of the type we are trying to build here. To them, Zuma is a king, a man with a divine right to loot as he likes from the fiscus. This is why they claimed several times during the conference that President Cyril Ramaphosa had abandoned Zuma. They wanted the man protected as though he were an emperor, not a servant of the people.
Second, the song is a deeply distressing display of antipathy to the supremacy of facts and evidence. Zuma’s misdemeanours and crimes are backed up by testimony and documentary evidence that is well nigh impossible to refute. Yet these geniuses are still asking what the man has done. You can imagine what sort of justice system they intend to run when they return to power. They want to run a system that has the kind of National Prosecuting Authority that swept Zuma’s cases under the carpet.
What we saw this weekend in KZN was not just singing. It was an attempt to erase history, to change the narrative, to once again paint Zuma as a victim. In the 2000s he claimed he was a victim of Thabo Mbeki and the white establishment. In the early 2010s he was a victim of unknown international forces, white monopoly capital and “clever blacks”. Today he is a victim of Ramaphosa and, well, everybody.
Wenzeni uZuma? is not a song. It is the manifesto for a full-on assault on the rule of law and our democracy. We must see it for what it is and condemn it.